Joanne Harris - Runemarks

From the far side of the cavern, Maddy was watching. She had seen Loki fall and had recognized him at once by his signature and the color of his hair. She had seen the ice woman rise, striding confidently across the great hall, apparently oblivious to the fragments and shards that rained from the ceiling.

Now she watched the confrontation, cautiously, through Bjarkán, keeping low to the ground behind a table-sized block of unpolished ice.

“Loki,” purred the woman. “You look terrible.” The glam between her fingers began to uncoil, slowly, like a sleepy snake.

Loki raised his head, not without difficulty. “I try to oblige.” He pushed himself up onto his knees, keeping a watchful eye on the runewhip.

“Please don’t get up on my account.”

“It’s no trouble,” Loki said.

“I wouldn’t quite say that,” said the woman, pushing him down with a booted foot. “In fact, I think I can safely say that you’re in rather a lot of it.”

“That’s Skadi,” said the Whisperer.

“The Huntress?” said Maddy, who knew the tale. A part of it, anyway: how Loki had tricked Skadi out of her vengeance against the Æsir and how, at last, she had made him pay.

“The same Skadi who hung the snake-?”

“The very same,” said the Whisperer.

That, thought Maddy, complicated things. She had been counting on the fact that the reawakened Sleeper would be both friendly and eager to help. But this was Skadi, the Snowshoe Huntress, one of the Vanir by marriage to Njörd. Her hatred of Loki was legendary, and from the look of things, five hundred years had done nothing to abate it.

“What about Loki?” Maddy said.

“Don’t worry,” said the Whisperer indifferently. “She’ll kill him, I expect, and then we can get on with business again.”

“Kill him?”

“I would think so. Why do you care? He wouldn’t lift a finger to help you, you know, if your positions were reversed.”

Maddy glared. “You knew this would happen.”

“Well, of course I did,” said the Whisperer. “Have you ever known Loki to keep his nose out of anything that might be interesting? And Skadi always had a special grudge against him above all, you know, ever since the Æsir killed her father, Thiassi of the Ice People, warlord of the Elder Age. The Æsir killed him, but Loki arranged it. I’d keep out of her way if I were you.”

But Maddy was already moving. Using the ice block as cover, she edged closer to the two opponents, Bjarkán crooked between her fingers. Across the hall Skadi looked down at Loki and gave her chilly smile.

“Come on, Skadi,” said Loki, working to recover a little of his glam. “I thought we were past all this by now. It’s been how long-five hundred years? Don’t you think it’s time we-?”

“That long?” she said. “It seems only yesterday that you were in chains with a snake over your head. Those were the days, eh, Loki?”

“Well, you haven’t changed much, either,” said Loki, bringing one hand slowly behind his back. “Still as perilously attractive as ever,” he went on, “and still with the same delightful sense of humor-”

And at this he moved, with the same uncanny speed that Maddy had seen before, and as he threw himself out of range of Skadi’s glam, he flung a rune into her face.

Maddy had time to recognize ýr just as Skadi countered it with a blow of her runewhip. The coil struck once, like blue lightning, casually pulverizing ýr, then slammed home, the barbed runes that made up its length biting into the frozen ground.

Loki dodged-but only just. The runewhip opened up a crevice in the ground where he had been and swept a dozen icicles off a hanging buttress twenty feet above as it snapped back into the light-crazed air.

Loki tried for another rune, but before the fingering was even complete, T ý r, the Warrior, was blasted from his hand with a force that left his fingers numb. And now he was cornered, his back to the wall, one arm thrown up to cover his face as Skadi stood over him, runewhip raised. Maddy could see him forking runes at the Huntress, but his glam was burned out; not a glimmer remained.

“Now, Skadi,” he said, “before you do anything hasty-”

“Hasty?” she said. “Not a chance. I’ve been looking forward to this for five hundred years.”

“Well, yes. Nice to see you’ve kept your strength up,” said Loki. “But before you cut me into little pieces-”

“Oh, Loki, I wouldn’t do that. ” She gave a laugh that rattled the icicles all the way to the frozen vault. “That would be over far too quickly. I want to see you suffer.”

Now Loki played his final card, his crooked smile beginning to show. It was a desperate move, to be sure, but he had always been at his most inventive in times of crisis.

“I don’t think you do,” he said.

“And why’s that?” said Skadi.

Loki grinned. He’d never felt less sure of himself, but as it was his last card, he played it with style. “I’ve got the Whisperer,” he said.

There was a very long pause.

Slowly the runewhip was lowered to the ground.

“You’ve got it? Where?”

Loki smiled and shook his head.

“Where?” In Skadi’s hand, the runewhip stirred threateningly, its tip reaching for him like the fangs of a snake. He waved it away with an impatient gesture.

“Oh, please. The minute I tell you that, I’m dead.”

“Good point,” said Skadi. “So. What do you want?”

Maddy had frozen the moment Loki mentioned the Whisperer. In her anxiety over One-Eye, it had not occurred to her how dangerous it was to have brought it with her into the Hall of the Sleepers.

Now it did, and Maddy cast about wildly for a place to hide it. Fortunately, she realized, the ice cavern was perhaps the only location in World Below where such a thing was possible, for the light-signatures that stitched the air were so bright and so numerous that among them even a powerful glam like the Whisperer might pass unnoticed for a time.

Cautiously she edged back behind the block where she had first taken cover. By scraping at the base with the edge of her knife, Maddy found she could make a gap large enough to hold the Whisperer. Sealing it with ýr and a few handfuls of packed snow, she inspected the result and decided it might pass.

It would have to pass, she told herself. Time was short, One-Eye was a prisoner, and although Loki was hardly a friend of hers, she wasn’t going to stand by and watch him be slaughtered. And so Maddy stood up and began to walk calmly toward the two deadlocked adversaries.

So far, so good. He’d bought himself some time.

Of course, it was the worst kind of ill chance to have happened upon Skadi, of all people-Skadi in her full Aspect, angry, alert, and strong as ever, Isa having no reverse position-besides which, Loki had never been much of a fighter, even in the old days, relying on wits rather than weaponry.

That runewhip of hers, he thought darkly. Doubtless some glam of the Elder Days, when they still had time and power to spend on such fancy work. It had not struck him directly-if it had, it would probably have taken his hand off-but even so, it had felt like being hit over the knuckles with a cudgel. His whole arm hurt, his right hand was still numb, and his chances of being able to work even the simplest fingering within the next hour were poor indeed.

But he was alive, against all expectation, and that was enough to cheer him for the present. At least…

Skadi had her back turned, and the first she knew of Maddy’s approach was the look of sudden anguish that flashed through Loki’s eyes. She turned and saw a young person not more than fourteen years of age walking steadily toward them.